Things you'd expect to be cheaper

[Sheepshanks]

Toyoda said:

Laptops. Seem to have shot up in price recently. A spec that cost me £400 a couple of years ago is around £600 now.

Easy to explain - the $/£ exchange rate and the price of memory (DRAM).

[shakotan]

Uncle John said:

Mcdonalds.

Now £20+ to feed 4.

Should be cheaper.

You must be joking.

You'd struggle to eat anywhere decent for under £20 for 4 people.

Wetherspoon's maybe? Greggs? Even the likes of Hungry Horse and Beefeater would be more than £20 for a meal and a drink.

[arfur]

Steamer said:

bazza white said:

Toilet roll. I can buy a nice brilliant white ream of paper for £2. A pack of second grade fluffy paper £6

a word of warning... Don't try and skim by buy the cheap stuff in Aldi.

You just end up spending more on hand wash and biological washing machine capsules

Costco is your answer ... 48 rolls of nice velvet cushy stuff is 11 quid :-)

[Sa Calobra]

shakotan said:

Uncle John said:

Mcdonalds.

Now £20+ to feed 4.

Should be cheaper.

You must be joking.

You'd struggle to eat anywhere decent for under £20 for 4 people.

Wetherspoon's maybe? Greggs? Even the likes of Hungry Horse and Beefeater would be more than £20 for a meal and a drink.

I continue to be amazed that people consider that place to serve food. It's loaded with sugar.

[JakeT]

xjay1337 said:

Dominos without discount codes

Anyone that pays full price for a Dominos is a fool.

Soft drinks in a pub always get me with the cost. Why is a pint of coke nearly the cost of a pint of larger!?

[clockworks]

Sheepshanks said:

Taking home £1K/mth in 1986 was good going. Average gross salary then was £9500/yr.

I went for an interview with Burroughs Machines a little earlier in the 80's - I can't remember the fine details but I was reasonably paid and they were offering less than I was currently earning.

I worked for Burroughs for nearly 20 years. Started at the Purley Way mainframe refurb centre in 1977, relocated to Milton Keynes in 1981 (banking terminal commissioning), then a field role from 1987.

I guess I'm forgetting that being a computer hardware guy back in the '80s was a decent, skilled, job. By the time I got out of the industry in 2010, we were mostly glorified box swappers, gradually being replaced by "technical couriers" on minimum wage.

[legless]

a said:

Wedding cakes.

There are some wedding costs that I understand... For example I know that a decent photographer charging £1,000+ is actually putting in a week's worth of work plus wear-and-tear on expensive equipment, insurance, etc.

But a cake is a cake. Even a very fancy cake goes off quite quickly so they must decorate it quickly after baking. I don't believe that it ever takes them a week to decorate a single cake. At best an intricate cake would be a full day of work. They might be very skilled, but there are loads of them so it's hardly a unique skill. How can they justify charging £1,000 for a cake? It's madness!

In common with other posters, my wife is a self-employed cake decorator.

She's just putting the finishing touches to a £1,150 order right now. So far, she's clocked up 94 hours work on it. It's an intricate design with lots of handmade sugar flowers, gold leaf and spray paint work.

By the time she's finished, she'll have made about £8.50 an hour profit on it.

Most cake decorators don't have a wedding tax. My wife charges the same prices regardless of occasion and I know that a lot of her contacts in the industry are the same. It's just that most wedding cake orders take far, far more effort than you could imagine possible.

To put things into perspective, her price for a plain 8" diameter 4.5" high filled sponge cake covered with chocolate ganache and fondant icing is £50. That's before any additional decorating and only covers the cost of the ingredients and her time at a nominal £10/hour.

[mike74]

Toyoda said:

Laptops. Seem to have shot up in price recently. A spec that cost me £400 a couple of years ago is around £600 now.

Yeah I was going to say laptops... they don't seem any cheaper now, for the equivalent spec, than when I bought my first one about 14 years ago.

[toasty]

JakeT said:

Soft drinks in a pub always get me with the cost. Why is a pint of coke nearly the cost of a pint of larger!?

Quite simply, the pubs don't make a profit on beer. They've got to make a living.

[Sa Calobra]

toasty said:

Quite simply, the pubs don't make a profit on beer. They've got to make a living.

I'd need to see figures to back that claim up.

[Yipper]

Food prices have gone mental. Food shortages and the weak Brexit Pound have made stuff very expensive. A single bag of food from the Big 4 was £10-20 under 5 years ago, now it's £20-40.

[kowalski655]

JakeT said:

...... Why is a pint of coke nearly the cost of a pint of larger!?

Especially if the pint of Coke is smaller!!

[thesyn]

SpeckledJim said:

I thought the generic name for Viagra was micoxaflopin

[uncinqsix]

Rostfritt said:

I currently live in New Zealand, so I could put pretty much everything on this list. Here the surprising things are lamb, beef and dairy products, which are produced in immense quantities but are actually cheaper when they end up abroad. Also craft beer, which seems to be about 4x more than you might expect in a supermarket and peppers, which I can't even consider paying about 10 times more than I would in the UK.

Nuts isn't it. I saw 500g butter for over $8 (>4 quid) in the supermarket the other day. It's because we have to pay "international market prices" apparently, but nobody's adequately explained why it's still substantially cheaper to buy the same stuff on the other side of the world.

[Speed 3]

Sa Calobra said:

toasty said:

Quite simply, the pubs don't make a profit on beer. They've got to make a living.

I'd need to see figures to back that claim up.

Why do you think pubs have been closing at the rate of dozens per week for years ? My sis & husband took a lease on one a few years ago and despite the fact it was really, really busy they worked 100 hours per week each and nearly lost everything including their house. And yes, they were good at what they did (both very successful hotel General Managers previously). They were basically screwed over by landlord and beer supplier. The only gross margin was on food and soft drinks and their overheads were huge. They will live with the consequences for decades.

[rustyuk]

Return bus fare from Bakewell to Matlock - 1 adult and 1 child £9.10p !!

[Sheepshanks]

mike74 said:

Yeah I was going to say laptops... they don't seem any cheaper now, for the equivalent spec, than when I bought my first one about 14 years ago.

Bit longer ago but I remember getting a Dell laptop in late 90's and it was 2 grand. I might have this wrong but I'm sure the little Sony's our directors had were 4 grand.

[Efbe]

Sa Calobra said:

shakotan said:

Uncle John said:

Mcdonalds.

Now £20+ to feed 4.

Should be cheaper.

You must be joking.

You'd struggle to eat anywhere decent for under £20 for 4 people.

Wetherspoon's maybe? Greggs? Even the likes of Hungry Horse and Beefeater would be more than £20 for a meal and a drink.

I continue to be amazed that people consider that place to serve food. It's loaded with sugar.

took the family to wetherspoons earlier this week as we were short on time and on the move.
£35 for 5 of us, only soft drinks, only main courses, 3 of which were kids meals. no starters or puddings.

bloody rip off.

[Ayahuasca]

uncinqsix said:

Rostfritt said:

I currently live in New Zealand, so I could put pretty much everything on this list. Here the surprising things are lamb, beef and dairy products, which are produced in immense quantities but are actually cheaper when they end up abroad. Also craft beer, which seems to be about 4x more than you might expect in a supermarket and peppers, which I can't even consider paying about 10 times more than I would in the UK.

Nuts isn't it. I saw 500g butter for over $8 (>4 quid) in the supermarket the other day. It's because we have to pay "international market prices" apparently, but nobody's adequately explained why it's still substantially cheaper to buy the same stuff on the other side of the world.

I live in Central America. Avocados and mangoes are a lot more expensive here, where they are grown, than in the UK, where they are imported. Figure that one out.

[vikingaero]

legless said:

a said:

Wedding cakes.

There are some wedding costs that I understand... For example I know that a decent photographer charging £1,000+ is actually putting in a week's worth of work plus wear-and-tear on expensive equipment, insurance, etc.

But a cake is a cake. Even a very fancy cake goes off quite quickly so they must decorate it quickly after baking. I don't believe that it ever takes them a week to decorate a single cake. At best an intricate cake would be a full day of work. They might be very skilled, but there are loads of them so it's hardly a unique skill. How can they justify charging £1,000 for a cake? It's madness!

In common with other posters, my wife is a self-employed cake decorator.

She's just putting the finishing touches to a £1,150 order right now. So far, she's clocked up 94 hours work on it. It's an intricate design with lots of handmade sugar flowers, gold leaf and spray paint work.

By the time she's finished, she'll have made about £8.50 an hour profit on it.

Most cake decorators don't have a wedding tax. My wife charges the same prices regardless of occasion and I know that a lot of her contacts in the industry are the same. It's just that most wedding cake orders take far, far more effort than you could imagine possible.

To put things into perspective, her price for a plain 8" diameter 4.5" high filled sponge cake covered with chocolate ganache and fondant icing is £50. That's before any additional decorating and only covers the cost of the ingredients and her time at a nominal £10/hour.

I baked a cake for my nephews birthday. A Galleon and a Treasure Chest. I started prepping on Weds, worked Thursday lunchtime until midnight, then from 8am Friday to 3am on Saturday morning for the party at lunchtime on Saturday. I would say that I'm a fairly competent amateur baker from the Pimp My Snack era yet it still took that long. Everyone was amazed by it and I vowed never again.... until Nov 22nd.